My name is David Sumner. I'm eighteen years old, and I just survived my first air raid.
On April 17, 1942, my major, Jimmy Doolittle, told me and 15 other flight crews that we would be bombing Japan. Tomorrow. I don't know if I've ever felt that scared and anxious and jittery at the same time in my life, even when they told me I was being drafted.
A ship saw us that day, the 18th. A Japanese ship saw us 650 miles off the coast ("Jimmy" 2). Major Doolittle knew, and we all knew that it was kill or be killed, so we chose to kill. The Major ordered us to fly our planes off the deck of the carrier that housed our planes, the Hornet, and we were to fly over Tokyo, Kobe, Yokohama, Nagoya, and Osaka ("Jimmy" 2). It was a suicide mission. He was crazy to tell us to do it. We didn't have enough fuel to reach China, our destination (Cohen 2). We would all crash into the South China Sea. And yet we all lined up to board our planes and bomb the hell out of Japan.
I could see the bombs falling from my hands to the ground, exploding into red and orange, but it wasn't enough. We didn't get to destroy Japan like they destroyed us in Pearl Harbor. I could hear in Doolittle's voice that he wasn't satisfied, but we had to get out of there. We were running out of fuel. Fast.
I heard the pilot of my plane screaming to the others that he wouldn't be able to make it much further. He told us that a plane had been intercepted in Russia and was not coming back; the rest of us crash-landed on the coast of China, but there were six guys missing ("Jimmy" 2). Doolittle told us that they had been captured by the Japs and that they probably wouldn't be coming back but that maybe we should pray for them (Cohen 3).
I didn't get to go home for a while. When I did, my parents called me a hero and showed me a newspaper from that April. The headlines read "'Tokyo Bombed! Doolittle Do'ed It!'" (Danzer 579). I was amazed. Never had the thought of being called a hero crossed my mind. They told me that the bombing of Japan had given Americans hope for their future in the war, and it gave me hope too.
Works Cited
Cohen, Alex. “WWII Heroes Recall the Doolittle Raid.” Day to Day (NPR). 4/20/2007. MasterFile Premier. Ebsco. Hunterdon Central Regional High School. 20 September 2008.
Danzer, Gerald, et al. The Americans. Evanston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2005.
"Jimmy Doolittle." American History. 2008. ABC-CLIO. Hunterdon Central Regional High School. 20 Oct. 2008.
http://jerryogrady.com/custom/Doolittle_Raid.jpg
http://www.forties.net/files/bombingjapanhokadatejapan1945.jpg
My name is David Sumner. I'm eighteen years old, and I just survived my first air raid.
On April 17, 1942, my major, Jimmy Doolittle, told me and 15 other flight crews that we would be bombing Japan. Tomorrow. I don't know if I've ever felt that scared and anxious and jittery at the same time in my life, even when they told me I was being drafted.
A ship saw us that day, the 18th. A Japanese ship saw us 650 miles off the coast ("Jimmy" 2). Major Doolittle knew, and we all knew that it was kill or be killed, so we chose to kill. The Major ordered us to fly our planes off the deck of the carrier that housed our planes, the Hornet, and we were to fly over Tokyo, Kobe, Yokohama, Nagoya, and Osaka ("Jimmy" 2). It was a suicide mission. He was crazy to tell us to do it. We didn't have enough fuel to reach China, our destination (Cohen 2). We would all crash into the South China Sea. And yet we all lined up to board our planes and bomb the hell out of Japan.
I could see the bombs falling from my hands to the ground, exploding into red and orange, but it wasn't enough. We didn't get to destroy Japan like they destroyed us in Pearl Harbor. I could hear in Doolittle's voice that he wasn't satisfied, but we had to get out of there. We were running out of fuel. Fast.
I heard the pilot of my plane screaming to the others that he wouldn't be able to make it much further. He told us that a plane had been intercepted in Russia and was not coming back; the rest of us crash-landed on the coast of China, but there were six guys missing ("Jimmy" 2). Doolittle told us that they had been captured by the Japs and that they probably wouldn't be coming back but that maybe we should pray for them (Cohen 3).
I didn't get to go home for a while. When I did, my parents called me a hero and showed me a newspaper from that April. The headlines read "'Tokyo Bombed! Doolittle Do'ed It!'" (Danzer 579). I was amazed. Never had the thought of being called a hero crossed my mind. They told me that the bombing of Japan had given Americans hope for their future in the war, and it gave me hope too.
Works Cited
Cohen, Alex. “WWII Heroes Recall the Doolittle Raid.” Day to Day (NPR). 4/20/2007. MasterFile Premier. Ebsco. Hunterdon Central Regional High School. 20 September 2008.
Danzer, Gerald, et al. The Americans. Evanston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2005.
"Jimmy Doolittle." American History. 2008. ABC-CLIO. Hunterdon Central Regional High School. 20 Oct. 2008.